Jack Straw Artist Residencies

Writers Program apps due next Wednesday!

The Jack Straw Artist Residency Programs offer established and emerging artists in diverse disciplines an opportunity to explore the creative use of sound in a professional atmosphere.

Program deadlines:

Writers Program (Curator: Nisi Shawl): Wednesday, November 1

Artist Support and New Media Gallery: Monday, November 27

All residency applications are now online via Submittable! If this format is not accessible to you for any reason, please contact us at [email protected] or (206) 634-0919. 

Questions? Check our FAQs or email us at [email protected].

Jack Straw Atrium Gallery

Cheryll Leo-Gwin | Larger than Life

October 2-December 29, 2023

Call 206-634-0919 or email [email protected] to schedule a visit

Jack Straw Cultural Center, 4261 Roosevelt Way NE

Friday, October 27, 7pm: Opening Reception

In person at Jack Straw

Larger than Life presents a series of oversized prints based on oral histories the artist recorded from Chinese women who survived turbulent times in the US and China. Leo-Gwin uses these oral histories as a point of departure for her oversized prints, sculpture, animation, and recordings.

Accompanying the exhibition is the release of Buried Alive, a pilot podcast produced by StoryBoards Northwest and Jack Straw Cultural Center.

Jack Straw New Media Gallery

Wei Yang and Murphy Janssen | now you are there when this happened

October 6-December 8, 2023

Call 206-634-0919 or email [email protected] to schedule a visit

Jack Straw Cultural Center, 4261 Roosevelt Way NE

Mondays, October 30, November 20, December 4, 7:30pm: Artist performances

Wei Yang and Murphy Janssen perform live with the installation, in person in the Jack Straw New Media Gallery

Friday, November 3, 7pm: Artist Talk

In person at Jack Straw or streaming via YouTube and Facebook.

December 9, 2pm: Youth and Family Workshop

E-mail [email protected] for information or to sign up.

Jack Straw Writers Program

Saturday, November 4, 2pm

Downtown Seattle Public Library, 1000 4th Ave, Seattle

Free - register to join in person

Curator Priscilla Long hosts a group reading of the 2023 Jack Straw Writers: Jim Cantú, Hana Choi, Brian Dang, Geri Gale, Stephen Reed Griggs, Garfield Hillson, Nancy Mburu, David K. Rea, Carla Shafer, Sumu Tasib, Kaitlyn Teer, and Julene Tripp Weaver.

E. J. Koh and Robert Lashley

Thursday, November 16, 7pm

Jack Straw Cultural Center, 4261 Roosevelt Way NE

FREE

E. J. Koh and Robert Lashley, debut novelists who were both participants in the 2016 Jack Straw Writers Program as poets, read from their new novels, The Liberators and I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer.

Artist Support Program

Nacha Mendez and Correo Aereo

Saturday, November 18, 8pm

Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center

4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, 4th floor, Seattle

7:30pm doors. $5-$20 in advance or at the door.

Closing out a week of recording at Jack Straw, Santa Fé-based guitarist/singer/composer and Jack Straw resident artist Nacha Mendez will perform a set of original songs, along with a handful of traditional songs from various Latin American sources. She shares the evening with the wonderful multi-instrumental duo Correa Aereo, playing soulfully melodic and richly polyrhythmic pan-Latin music.

Jack Straw Writers and Bushwick Book Club Seattle

Jack Straw and the Bushwick Book Club Seattle are once again teaming up to create new music inspired by the work of the Jack Straw Writers! 

The Bushwick Book Club and Jack Straw will share a new video every couple weeks featuring a reading and song. Follow along on YouTube or social media! 

September 27: Garfield Hillson and Townsend's Solitaire

October 11: Geri Gale and Shelby Natasha

October25: David K. Rea and Kate Olson

November 8: Hana Choi and Intisaar

Join us on Social Media!

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to get regular doses of writing, art, and music from Jack Straw artists of all ages.

As part of our celebration of Filipino American History Month, we shared this poem from Foster High School student Mhilz, written with help from poet and teaching artist Merna Ann Hecht:

I am a son of the Philippines

Where my grandmother still lives in a Green Paradise Hill

Where my grandmother enjoys her life

Where my grandmother can water her plants. . . .

Jack Straw Podcasts

Jack Straw Artist of the Week

The current installment of our Artist of the Week podcast is a pair of concrete poems by Gabriela Denise Frank in the shape of salmon, one heading downstream and the other heading upstream. The poems are included in the anthology I Sing the Salmon Home, edited by Rena Priest.

Listen at jackstraw.org, or subscribe via Apple Podcasts.

SoundPages, the Jack Straw Writers Program Podcast

The 2023 Jack Straw Writers SoundPages series launches with a conversation between Garfield Hillson and 2023 Writers Program Curator Priscilla Long, and a recording of Garfield's live reading at Jack Straw.

Listen at jackstraw.org, or subscribe via Apple Podcasts.

Jack Straw New Media Gallery Podcast

Jonathan Rodriguez of Till the Teeth and Whitney Lynn talk with Jack Straw producer Carlos Nieto about their Jack Straw New Media Gallery installation Time Kills. 

Listen at jackstraw.org, or subscribe via Apple Podcasts.

Gratitude to the First People of Seattle

The staff, board, and artists of Jack Straw Cultural Center acknowledge that we are living, creating, working, and playing on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle and the Salish Sea - the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Muckleshoot nations and other Coast Salish peoples, past and present. We honor them and the land itself with deep gratitude.

Support Jack Straw Cultural Center

Jack Straw Cultural Center relies on the support of individual contributors to make our programs possible. Please help us continue to support the work of artists working with sound and all our art and technology education programs. Donate any amount by clicking the button below, or sending a check directly to us at 4261 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105.

Support Jack Straw's programs with a one-time or recurring gift.